On List of Apple’s Largest Deals, Beats Would Be Biggest by Far

Apple Inc. has never been one to make a splashy deal. That could be poised to change.

The iPhone and iPad maker is in talks to acquire Beats Electronics LLC, the high-end headphone maker founded by music industry veteran Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, the hip-hop producer and artist. The proposed $3.2 billion deal would be the biggest in Apple’s history.

Apple has maintained a low profile on the merger-and-acquisition front, despite a $151 billion cash pile. It has bought a string of small and little-known companies, with an eye toward acquiring talent or nascent technologies. Last month, Apple said it had acquired 24 companies over the past 18 months, but most are so small that the company doesn’t announce them publicly.

The proposed Beats deal is a different animal entirely–and it has some analysts scratching their heads. “We are struggling to see the rationale behind this move,” Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, wrote in a research note about the potential deal. He said Apple “has never acquired a brand for a brand’s sake.”

Until now, Apple’s biggest deal was its acquisition of NeXT Software Inc. for $430 million in 1997, according to data provider Dealogic. That deal brought Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs back to the company. Its next biggest acquisition came in 2012, when Apple spent $393 million on fingerprint-product maker AuthenTec Inc. Apple also spent $350 million on PrimeSense Inc. last November.

But that strategy may be changing. “We’re not anti-getting a big company,” Apple CEO Tim Cooksaid in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last month. He said he was against doing “something that’s not strategic.”

Here’s a list of Apple’s acquisition history dating back to 1995. The data are courtesy of Dealogic.